The explicit viral video showing a Wandsworth prison officer having sex with an inmate in his cell is the latest example in the growing trend of behind-bars relationships. In the three years to March 2023, 31 female prison staff working in male prisons were sacked, including one who gave birth to her inmate lover’s baby and another who had his cell number tattooed on her thigh. It is more than 50 per cent rise on the 19 women sacked in the previous four-year period, and that figure doesn’t include incidents recorded at private prisons, run by companies such as G4S, Serco and Sodexo. But according to those who have worked in the system, instances of sex inside jail like the shocking example at Wandsworth prison is just the tip of the iceberg. One former prison officer, previously told the Mail: ‘The numbers will be much, much higher than the figures that have emerged because these events are swept under the carpet. ‘If a sexual relationship ever comes to light, then normally the prison officer is given the chance to resign. They don’t like this stuff to come out, it’s hugely embarrassing.’
To an outsider, it’s hard to understand what drives an officer to risk an affair with an inmate, knowing they could lose everything if they are caught. So what exactly is going on behind prison walls? The case which brought the problem to the national spotlight this week involved Linda De Sousa Abreu, 31, who appeared on a Channel Four documentary about threesomes and orgies, MailOnline revealed yesterday. She is understood to have recently quit her job as a prison officer in the South London jail following the scandal. Linda is seen wearing uniform during the explicit clip, which begins with her performing a sex act on an unidentified prisoner at the Category A Wandsworth jail in south-west London. The footage, which MailOnline understands to be recent, then shows her having sex with the prisoner while his cellmate films on a mobile phone. Footage of the cell shows a TV and piles of clothes heaped over a bunk bed. The friend who is smoking while recording says: ‘Guys we’ve made history, this is what I’m telling you.’ The prison officer’s radio, left on a side table, crackles constantly with her colleagues heard on the other channels above the din of the other prisoners on the landing unaware of what is going on in the cell. At one point, someone appears to try to come into the cell, at which the man filming, can be heard saying to the person on the other side of the door ‘give me a minute, one second.’ The prisoner filming tells his friend to carry on and then pans the camera round momentarily and, grinning, says: ‘This is how we roll in Wandsworth.’ And her sibling, who is a personal trainer from London, told MailOnline yesterday how she had to block fans of her sister from her own social media after she appeared on the swingers show. Linda is also believed to have an explicit OnlyFans account. But she is not the only female prison officer to fall for the charms of a male inmate. Take the case of probationary officer Ayshea Gunn, who exchanged more than 1,200 phone calls, including explicit video calls, with prisoner Khuram Razaq. She even smuggled a pair of knickers into his cell, concealed in her bra. In a similarly sordid tale at HMP Berwyn in North Wales, her fellow officer Emily Watson performed a sex act on an inmate in his cell on Christmas Day. At HMP Berwyn in Wrexham an astonishing 18 female guards or other female staff have been fired for illicit relationships with male inmates since 2017. This includes Jennifer Gavan, 27 who was jailed for eight months in December 2022 following her relations with prisoner Alex Coxon, 25. She had sent intimate photos of herself to Coxon on Snapchat and kissed him during the relationship between April and July 2020. Gavan, from Wrexham, pleaded guilty to misconduct in public a public office at Mold Crown Court after she accepted £150 to bring in the mobile phone. Roxanne Walker, 34, another female guard at the 2,100 medium-risk category ‘C’ facility, dubbed ‘Britain’s cushiest’ received a nine-month prison sentence, suspended for two years after engaging in ‘sexually explicit’ chats with an inmate. This sexual impropriety is far from unique to HMP Berwyn in Wrexham, which calls cells ‘rooms’, blocks ‘communities’, and allows inmates to have their own phones and laptops. There has been an alarming rise in the number of female officers from across the HM Prison Service found guilty of striking up illicit relationships. The latest figures from the MoJ revealed that as of last September female prison officers now represent 42.1 per cent of the workforce. In five years, the number of female officers working in prisons has risen by 3,519 – a surge of nearly 28
